


Helping Hands

by Sholio



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Shaving, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-09 23:23:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17414522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Sequel toLifeline.Karen helps Frank with a few things he can't easily do himself.





	Helping Hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



> For anyone coming into this cold: this story is a sequel to [Lifeline](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17008611), in which Frank was blinded and shot. This picks up shortly thereafter, so he's still recovering. Thank you to Sheron for the beta, and for inspiration/cheerleading! ♥

It's four steps from the door of the Liebermans' guest bedroom to the bathroom. Six steps down the hallway to the open-plan living room and kitchen. Twelve steps to the kitchen (and don't trip on the coffee table). Six steps to the sink. The top shelf in the 'fridge is leftovers, second shelf is staples like milk and cheese, bottom shelf has the kids' lunches. Beer and condiments in the door. Bread is on the counter to the left.

Frank has always mapped his world. Every space he goes into, he checks the exits, the cover, the layout of the walls and ceiling. Places to hide. Places other people could hide. It's something he always expected he'd stop doing when he came back from deployment, but he never really did. It's second nature now, and it's a survival trait, even if he never expected to have to use it this way.

Never expected to have to find his way around without using his eyes.

But it means he doesn't have to feel his way around the Liebermans' house with his hands; once he gets used to it, he can move swiftly and surely from the open door to the hall, into the kitchen -- get a glass of water (one thumb inside the edge of it to feel when it's all the way to the top -- and take it back to the bedroom. If the confidence is mostly fake, it's not like he hasn't faked it before.

The kids are impressed, as well as delighted to have him there. They practically trip over themselves during the first evening to fetch him things. Sarah makes calzones for dinner and everyone eats with their hands. Frank mostly lets the family's banter wash over him. He still can't quite wrap his head around being here. The fact that he can't see them makes it somehow unreal. He's exhausted by the time dinner is over, and he could push through it and sit with them in the living room, but he thinks they deserve their family time without a guest hanging around. Anyway, he still can't get over how little energy he has. He moves like there's broken glass in his bones, limping around and trying to avoid twisting or torquing his gut, or making any sudden moves involving his legs. The docs told him the damage is mainly to the muscles lining the abdominal wall, but he'll just have to take their word for it that it's better than it could have been. He's had beatings that didn't hurt this much.

In the Liebermans' guest room, he double-checks the door is shut, and maps out the room by feel before he finds the bag David packed yesterday at his place. He meant to change into pajamas, but he's already wearing sweats and the extra effort of getting slowly and painfully into a different set of clothes doesn't seem worth it. He also realizes that he forgot to brush his teeth, in fact hasn't looked through the bag David packed for him in enough depth to even figure out if he _has_ a toothbrush, but he's sitting down now and can't quite face the idea of getting up again.

There are a couple of prescription bottles from the pharmacy around here somewhere, but he realizes he's not entirely sure where they are. He gropes around and eventually finds the bag on the nightstand, but when he opens it up he has no idea which bottle is which, or how to even find out.

He sits there on the bed for a few minutes in the grip of a frustration so deep he has to fight not to throw the bottles against the wall. His gut throbs. He wants a goddamn pain pill, and he doesn't know how to get one without poisoning himself.

He could just ask the Liebermans. They'd happily help him; hell, they'd probably fall all over themselves to do it.

And he can't bring himself to get out of bed and lurch out there into the living room and ask them to do something as everyday as reading the label on a bottle for him.

Instead, he opens a bottle at random and puts the little tablet on his tongue. It's not like he's going to overdose on one pill no matter what it is. He can figure out the actual dosage in the morning. Somehow.

Carefully, curling around his surgical stitches, he tries to arrange himself into a halfway comfortable position on the bed. He lies awake, then, with strange sheets under him and strange smells around him, in utter darkness behind the bandages over his eyes, listening to the sound of the TV in the living room and Leo arguing with her father about some kind of math problem. 

He touches his face, feels his way across the bandages. He has a follow-up appointment scheduled day after tomorrow. Might get them off; then again, might not.

 

*

 

In the morning, breakfast is egg sandwiches (he wonders how long it'll take David and Sarah to run out of ideas for finger food) and he spills a glass of milk in the kitchen. He can hear it clatter to the floor (shatterproof, he thinks after the first shocked instant; makes sense with kids in the house). He's still trying to figure out how he's going to clean it up, or hell, how he's going to keep his balance well enough to lean over when someone touches his shoulder and leans past him. Sarah: he identifies the swish of her hair, the smell of floral body wash. "I've got it," she says. "It's okay."

"Sorry," he says, not sure what else to say.

"I'm a mom," she says with a laugh in her voice. "You think this is the first time I've mopped up a spill in the kitchen?"

"Hey, hon, I'll take the school run today," David calls from somewhere in the living room. His voice comes a little closer. "Frank, are you good here? I could come back after I drop off the kids and work from home today. My schedule's flexible --"

"You don't have to take the day off to babysit me, for God's sake," he says, harsher than he means to, and then backs off from it: "Sorry."

"Frank, for ..." David takes a breath and pats his shoulder with awkward but sincere affection. "Stop apologizing, man. Uh, before I leave, do you need help with ... anything?"

"No," Frank says immediately. He wants a shower, but nowhere near enough to want help with it. And he also knows he needs a shave -- he can feel, when he touches his jaw, that the sandpaper scruff is already softening into the early stages of a beard -- but that's not something he wants David to help him with, either.

The house empties out and for a little while, there's nothing but relief at being alone. He realizes after they're gone that he forgot to ask about the prescription bottles, but he didn't kill himself last night and his surgery-bruised abdomen is hurting like hell again, so he takes another pill and that one doesn't kill him either. He figures out how to brush his teeth by touch (not actually that hard), thinks idly about risking the shower after all, and then decides to wait and deal with that tomorrow, after he (hopefully) gets the bandages off. Instead he changes into clean sweats.

He spends some time feeling his way around, adding more dimensions to his mental map of the Liebermans' house, and in particular, working out the locations of the furniture so he'll stop bruising himself on chair legs and the edges of tables. In the living room, he knocks something off a shelf; he hears it hit the floor, probably a framed photo, and curses quietly to himself. Getting down to the floor is a painful process that takes awhile, and he's still feeling around for it when the doorbell rings.

Frank curses again. Delivery? They might go away. Hell, he doesn't even live here. But he _is_ here, and slowly but surely he gets back to his feet (he never realized how much work abdominal muscles actually do, goddammit). Getting to the door takes awhile, and he figures they'll be gone by the time he gets there, especially since the doorbell hasn't rung again. But instead there's a small knock, kind of shy.

Frank has his hand on the doorknob when he realizes that the hapless delivery person or cookie-selling Girl Scout on the other side of the door is about to be confronted by a Frankenstein's monster -- bandages, bruises, unshaven jaw and all. "Hey, I'm a houseguest," he calls through the door. "Probably can't help you. Can you just leave whatever it is on the porch?"

"Frank?" says Karen's voice.

It's so unexpected that he just stands there for a minute, and then he unlocks the door and opens it.

There's warm air -- sunshine? -- and Karen's perfume and her hand on his arm. "Hi there," she says. 

"Hi," he says, surprised, amazed. "Do you, uh. Want to come in?"

"Sure," she says, and he steps back and gets out of the way. He thinks she might be carrying something -- there are rustles, and a fried smell, which is confirmed when she says, "Have you had lunch? Burgers from Paddy's."

He isn't really hungry (appetite's still coming back), and doesn't even know where or what Paddy's is, but the grease and meat smells pretty good. "Sounds great," he says, a little dazed -- by the fact that she's _here,_ mostly; visiting him in the hospital when he'd almost died is one thing, but she came all the way to David and Sarah's place just to bring him lunch. "You, uh ... want a drink?" Then he realizes he's not entirely sure he can figure out what the available options are, at least not easily. "I mean, I could get you some water. Water sound good?"

"Water would be great. Actually," she says, and her hand is on his elbow, a gentle pressure, "I'll get it, and you sit down and unwrap this. Plates?" she adds, her voice moving away.

"Cabinet by the sink." He touches the edge of the table, where she guided him and left him, doing it so smoothly he hardly even noticed -- reminding him, again, that she's used to hanging around with Murdock. "You didn't have to do this," he adds, sorting out the burgers and fries by touch.

"Sure I did. I'm tired of eating alone at my desk. They're identical, by the way -- the burgers," she adds over the sound of clinking and running water in the kitchen. "Two cheeseburgers with everything. If you want anything taken off --"

"Cheeseburgers with everything sounds good to me."

A plate clatters in front of him, followed by the click of a glass of water landing on the tabletop. Karen's deft fingers touch his hand lightly, guide him to it with a glide of fingertips. And then her hand is gone and she's sitting down across from him in a rustle of skirts and one of the burgers rustles as it's transferred from wrappings to plate.

He's got to hand it to her. The Liebermans are well-intentioned about all of this, infinitely forgiving of his clumsiness and mistakes, but they're also a little bit nervous, trying to tiptoe around his feelings and stumbling continually over their own desire to help. Karen just ... isn't like that. She doesn't push, she doesn't press, she just shows him where things are and then lets him alone. He didn't realize it was possible to be an expert in blind-person wrangling, but come to find out, it's a skill set, and Karen's got it.

But it wouldn't work if she wasn't comfortable touching him, and he thinks about that, too, as he unwraps the burger and takes a careful bite. He thinks about her hand on his arm, her sure fingers guiding his to the cool side of the water glass.

Without the usual visual cues to depend on, he finds himself straining his ears and becoming hyper-aware of Karen on the other side of the table -- every little rustle, the quiet little noises as she eats. But it's not a bad kind of thing, just a little tense, and even that relaxes slowly as Karen chats casually about work. He does find himself trying to eat as neatly as possible, not really sure what it looks like from the outside. He wouldn't mind ketchup for the fries but decides to have them without since he can easily see himself ending up looking like a stabbing victim that way. Anyway, he doesn't really want to have to ask Karen where the ketchup is, when it's not even her house.

"You said you're getting those off in a day or two, right?" Karen asks. "The bandages."

"I've got an appointment tomorrow." Which David will probably fall all over himself to drive him to. He decides to go ahead and be honest with her. "Not a sure thing they'll come off then, though. It's a big question mark right now."

"I was thinking ..." He can hear Karen tapping her fingers on the edge of the table. "If it would be a help, there are some tricks Matt uses for dealing with things. I can show you, if you like."

 

*

 

It's organizational, mostly. She helps him set up the guest bedroom, getting everything off the floor, unpacking his bag into easy-to-reach places and guiding his hands to each item so he knows where everything is. She reads off the labels on the prescription bottles, so he finally knows what the hell everything is, and sets them on the bedside table, lined up carefully with each in its own place.

He feels like it should bother him more than it does (hell, she's arranging his underwear for him) but he was in the military and he was married, both situations that involve giving up a certain amount of control over basic personal needs. Karen's not his wife, not his supply clerk, but there's a similar kind of casualness to how she deals with his kit. She doesn't give him the impression that she feels weird about it, so he doesn't either. 

"I think that's everything," Karen says. She's somewhere in the middle of the bedroom floor, while he's sitting on the bed, and he can picture her with surprising ease, hands on her hips, surveying her handiwork. "At least everything I can think of. Is there anything specific you were wondering about?"

There is, actually, but he's hesitant to bring it up with her. On the other hand, she just helped him put away his underwear and sort out his meds, so it's not like there's a lot of ground left unexplored at this point. "Yeah, there was one thing," he says, and, hesitating over the words, "How does Murdock handle shaving?"

"Electric razor, probably. That and a lot of practice." There's a soft laugh; Karen pauses, and then she says, "I could do it for you. If you want me to."

 

*

 

So that's how he ends up in a chair in the bathroom, sitting still as the swish and rustle of skirt and hair, the clink of items on the edge of the sink, alert him to Karen moving around him.

She pauses with her hand resting on the back of the chair, her knuckles lightly touching his spine through his sweatshirt. "Are you sure you're okay with this, Frank?"

In truth, he's not sure he is, but he wants the scruff gone; it makes him feel unkempt, in a way the sweatpants don't. Maybe it's just that the feel of the beard growing out reminds him of a time in his life that he doesn't want to think about. "Yeah, I'm good," he says, and tilts his head back, jaw and throat exposed. Better get it over with.

There is a hesitation; then the hiss of the shaving foam. It's cool and startling when it touches his jaw. With an effort, he doesn't flinch, but he can't quite relax as she spreads the foam with careful sweeps of her fingertips, and then the razor, guided by her deft fingers, rasps after it.

She shaves with great care around the bruises, around the torn skin at the edge of his mouth. Her strokes are tentative at first -- and it's interesting, being able to tell the difference between the way she was with him earlier, the I-have-done-this-before confidence of dealing with a blind man, and her slight uncertainty now. She never shaved Matt; of that he's sure. But he can feel her growing confidence, the increasingly assured path of the razor tracing its course over his cheek. 

And all the while, he's also aware of his head resting lightly against her front, just below her breasts. Her abdomen flexes against him as her weight shifts, little unconscious movements as she focuses on his face. 

She saves his upper lip for last. Her fingers stroke lightly over the sensitive skin, spreading foam. The razor glides after. He keeps his lips shut, face still, breathing in the scent of her perfume and soap above the familiar smell of the shaving foam.

The razor draws down from the corner of his mouth, and Karen suddenly is leaning across him, making him intensely aware of her silky blouse against his ear, as she lays down the razor with a click against the sink. Her hair runs silken past his ear. 

There's the splash of running water, barely registered, and then a warm cloth smoothing over his face, cleaning away the foam. "How does it feel?" she asks.

It takes him a minute to come back enough to answer. "Good," he says, touching his face and feeling the soft skin left by a clean shave. He tips his head back again. She's still there, close behind him, the whisper of her blouse and floral scent of her shampoo. "Thanks."

"It's all right," she says gently, and her hand rests lightly on his shoulder. "You've done a lot for me. I'm glad I could help."

It frustrates him suddenly, desperately, that he doesn't know what he would see on her face now, if he could see it. He doesn't know what she's looking at, doesn't know the right thing to say or the words to ask what he doesn't even know if he wants to ask -- if she _minds_ , what she wants, why she took off a whole afternoon from work just to help a temporarily-blind man find his way around the house.

He can't see her face; he doesn't have words to ask her. But he has something else, another language they still share: touch. And he thinks, knowing Murdock as she does, that she'll understand. He reaches up, cautiously and carefully, with the hand that until now has been by his side, curled loosely over the edge of the chair.

His fingers brush against the hanging curtain of her hair. There's a small intake of breath, but she doesn't pull away.

"Okay?" he asks quietly.

"Yes," she says. "What are you doing?"

"Looking at your face," he says.

"You know what I look like."

"I know." He can't really explain that it's not the same as knowing how she's looking at him _now._

But maybe she understands, because she squeezes his shoulder briefly and says, "Go ahead."

He uses her hair as a guide to find where her face is, running the back of his hand lightly and loosely up the tickling strands until he can tell he's close; then he turns his hand, and his fingertips brush the soft curve of her cheek.

He didn't expect it would feel this vividly intimate. He stops. She doesn't move, and then she turns her face slightly toward his fingers.

He needs to know what expression her face is showing him now. He holds his hand very carefully, the lightest of touches as his fingers cross her cheek. There is the fuzzy curve of an eyebrow, the fluttering of lashes, and under his thumb, the corner of her mouth, sticky with lip gloss.

He feels her lips move. Feels her smile. 

Feels her lips part slightly under the ball of his thumb, as she starts to say something, then stops.

For a little while, they are still, just like that: Frank with his hand lightly spanning her face, Karen with the full curve of her lower lip against his thumb, the top slightly apart. She isn't speaking. He'd have heard her. 

Then, suddenly embarrassed, he moves his hand away from her lips, away from her face -- but before he can pull away, she bends forward and touches her face to the side of his, leaning over his shoulders in a kind of quiet hug. Her hair frames his face and falls down over his chest and his heart.

She stays like that for a little while, until he starts to relax, leaning into her. He's not used to this, to any of this. There's not supposed to be something soft at the bottom when you fall. That's not how it works.

But maybe sometimes there is.

He's not sure how long they stay like that, until she turns her head and presses a brief kiss to his temple above the bandages, and while he's still trying to cope with _that_ , she moves away and there are small clicking and clinking noises as she cleans up.

"So how's it look?" Frank wants to know, touching the smooth skin of his jaw again. The soreness and bruising is starting to go down, but he can imagine the vivid colors it's turning in the meantime.

Karen laughs softly. "How honest do you want me to be?"

That makes him grin, which still hurts a little. "Give it to me straight."

"You look like you ran facefirst into a telephone pole, and the pole punched back. But," she adds, "you look better than the last time I saw you."

Her hand hovers above his shoulder again. He can feel it there, the fingers brushing his sweatshirt without quite settling, and he reaches up to grasp her wrist, gives it a squeeze.

"Thanks for coming over. And for the shave." And he means thanks for more than that, but he can't quite manage to say it.

"Hey, it got me out of a meeting with the editorial department heads. You're doing _me_ a favor." She twists her hand around to squeeze his fingers, then lets go. "But I can't keep playing hooky forever. Walk me to the door?"

He does that, moving with a little more assurance through the living room furniture with the crisp rustling of her skirt to follow. He can tell she opens the door when sunlight falls warm across his face. 

"So, I could come over tomorrow after your appointment," she says. "I'm working on an article, but I can write it here, if I bring my laptop. Would you mind that?"

There's a part of him wants to argue. Tell her she doesn't have to, the same way he argues with the Lieberman kids every time one of them runs to fetch him something. But she's waiting, expectant, and eventually he finds the words to say, "Yeah. That'd be nice."


End file.
